As the SEE region integrates with the EU and increases ties within, receives economic support and achieves stabilization, the pent up innovation and human development potential of South-East Europe is increasingly starting to unleash.

What was Central and Eastern Europe ten years ago as a booming and investment opportunity, we have now in South-East Europe. Since 2011, Balkan Unlimited Foundation has been working cross-border on reinforcing and building upon these positive trends. This is the Emerging South-Eastern Europe, that is raising in prominence as an attractive investment and business hub.

The results of this are the circuit of Balkan Venture Forum events, a number of regional and European startup coaching programs and most importantly boosting an effective regional community of innovative entrepreneurs. This community and the remarkable entrepreneurs that drive it, are the way forward towards economic and human development for the SEE region.

Still the region largely lacks effective entrepreneurship support to satisfy the demand, mainly due to lack of know-how and access to finance. A number of hubs are struggling to fill this void, but face great difficulties due to regional competition and lack of resources. By jointly developing thriving interconnected local communities, we can truly accelerate the development of entrepreneurs and successful startups, on par with more advanced eco-systems.

Thus the logical next stage of supporting the regional community, means to support the local communities it consists of, with concrete and thorough local programs. SuperFounders is on a mission to fulfill this need.

The main segment of the SuperFounders Investment Forum was the pitching session of ten startups from the digital space.

Funderbeam is a discovery and analytics engine for early-stage investment opportunities and a community platform for angel investors.

Room in the Moon is an online platform designed for young professionals and students who are moving abroad. It allows them to overcome the challenge of moving overseas by helping them to make friends, find accommodation and learn about the city.

Vapour Apps is a private cloud based on open source software. It represents a complete corporate IT ecosystem with predefined applications which allows its clients to manage the users, servers and applications from a single dashboard.

They placed scores for each of the eleven startups on the strength of the team, market potential, market position, USPs and presentation quality. A snapshot of the pitching jury below: In a relatively evenly matched field with consistent quality, the top three startups were:

ITU Çekirdek (“ITU Seed” in English) is one of the leading entrepreneur support programs in Turkey that brings together entrepreneurs who wish to start their own businesses and have the knowledge and training to implement their projects. ITU Çekirdek provides for all the requirements of implementing creative and technology-based ideas, and was founded by ITU and ITU ARI Teknokent in 2012 for establishing a healthy entrepreneurship ecosystem in Turkey.

ITU Çekirdek Entrepreneurship Ecosystem provides many facilities and services including common work areas, laboratories, innovation rooms, pre-incubation and incubation in order to accelerate entrepreneurial projects. Consultancy firms, mentors, investment companies and investors needed by the entrepreneurs working within ITU Çekirdek often come together in events organized by the center.

Having received over 2500 project applications in the last three years and ITU Cekirdek received 1000 applications in 2014 alone, the ITU Çekirdek Entrepreneurship Ecosystem has become one of the leading actors of the entrepreneurship ecosystem in Turkey, and is open to applications by students of Turkish or foreign universities, and entrepreneurs with no age limit.

Most companies developed in ITU Çekirdek have found buyers for their products and moved towards commercialization. The clients of ITU Çekirdek entrepreneurs include Turkey’s leading corporations like Ramsey, Turkish Airlines and İş Bankası. Global brands such as National Instruments and Vestel are among the business partners of ITU Çekirdek startup companies. ITU Çekirdek has so far made patent applications for 19 innovative projects incubated within the facility, and is currently preparing new patent applications. Projects admitted to ITU Çekirdek to date are in a variety of fields including environment, electronics, chemicals, defense, software, naval architecture, mechanics, and agriculture.

ITU Çekirdek provides all incubation and accelerator services needed to convert the hard work and project of an entrepreneur into a successful business, and has become the best source of qualified entrepreneurs for investors. ITU Çekirdek ensures that people with technology-based projects practice entrepreneurship and rise to achievement through trial-error-trial-success.